What's in a DGNLIB? This question has been asked a few times on the V8i Forums.
Background
Administrators are increasingly using DGNLIBs to define project standards. That's one reason why Bentley invented DGNLIBs, to provide a project-wide resource.
The Problem
Unfortunately, a DGNLIB is a black box. Once you've stored your text styles, level tables or whatever in there, it's not obvious what a particular DGNLIB contains. It could be a mixture of things. Different project admins. may have responsibility for different data, which both end up unknowingly in the same DGNLIB.
The Solution
A DGNLIB audit tool. An audit tool reveals what data are stored in a DGNLIB. That primary purpose would be invaluable, alongside other tools such as theiWare Configuration Explorer.
An evolution of the audit tool to a management tool would further help admins. For example, suppose a particular DGNLIB (project.dgnlib) contains definitions for both levels and text styles. The name of the file doesn't give much away, but suppose you could split x intoproject-level-defs.dgnlibandproject-text-styles.dgnlib? Now things are clearer and easier to manage.
The MicroStation Explorer goes part way to show what a dgnlib file contains, this is shown in the file panel. However it does not show if its local or external. A dgnlib audit tool would definitely be useful.
When creating a dgnlib, I find it important to start with a dgn that contains no definitions of anything. I like to keep definitions separate, so my text styles are in a different dgnlib to my dimension styles. It is very easy to make a mistake, such as accidentally defining a level in a text style dgnlib. The audit tool will show this, and if there is a duplicate defined, these should be highlighted.
I support the creation of a dgnlib audit tool.
Audit per file. What is stored in a certain DGNLIB?
Audit per definition. In which DGNLIB is definition X stored? X being anything like dimension/txt/level/blah.
Audit per configuration level. Organisation, Workspace, Workset.
Audit batch. Audit a bunch of files by drag'n'drop.
Report doubles. Report definitions that are stored (twice) in more then one file.
Report dependencies. Dimensions are located in Library D, but they rely on a library level located in Library L and on colors from Library C.
Audit all. Report all the definitions for this organisation/workspace/workset and tell us what is where. Also report not defined stuff.
My problem is when say I am annotating a drawing and suddenly see a dimension that comes in on wrong level. I can go to Dimenstyles dialog and see if it matches the library or not.
But not which library (if I am undertanding this correctly).
If the dialog popup showed config vars and name and path the to the dgnlib it would solve the problem. Or best - option to open that dgnlib!
trying
The Explorer reveals most of this but not the file names of the corresponding dgnlibs. It would be nice to have this information where a specific definition is stored
Michael VerHoef 11 months ago
I can't even tell what types of data are able to be stored in a dgnlib. So far I've figured out:
1. Feature definitions
2. Design standards
3. Text and dimension styles
4. Levels and level features
5. Custom GUI items
Who knows what else they can store?!
Current best practice for figuring out where something comes from seems to be removing files from your workspace and refreshing until the item in question is no longer available within Microstation. Then you know it was in the last file that was removed.
Given that it's been five years, looks like they're just going to move on to OpenRoads Designer without fixing this issue.